CRIM 220 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Probability Theory, Confidence Interval, Statistical Parameter
21 Oct 2016
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Sampling (sampling makes it possible to select a few hundred thousand people for study and discover things that apply to many more people who are not studied) Introduction (how we collect representative data is fundamental to criminal justice research) Sampling: selecting some units of a larger population for further study (the process of selection observation) Much of the value of research depends on how data are collected. Probability sampling techniques enable us to make relatively few observations and then generalize from those observations to a much wider population. Although probability sampling is central to criminal justice research, it cannot be used in many situations of interest. Keep in mind one important goal of all sampling: to reduce, or at least to understand potential biases that may be at work in selecting subjects. The logic of probability sampling (probability sampling helps researchers generalize from observed cases to unobserved ones)
